Even if you haven’t sang with Choir! Choir! Choir!, you’ve likely seen and heard what they do. The Toronto-based creation of Nobu Adilman and Daveed Goldman is part community choir, part social movement. People show up to their events and sing creative renditions of popular songs, in three-part harmony. Sometimes, musicians sing with them.

Recordings of their performances live on YouTube, where they’ve seen millions of views. A video of 1,500 singers performing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” with Rufus Wainwright went viral last year, inspiring hundreds of earnest, emotional comments. “Simply stunning. Tears streaming down my face,” wrote one viewer.

Adilman and Goldman struck upon something that resonates with people: the joy of singing together. Since 2011, when they held their first drop-in singing event, they have built a community of dedicated singers (who pay $5 and show up every Tuesday and Wednesday in a back room at a Toronto bar) and continued to attract large crowds at events across Canada and the United States.

During their last visit to Edmonton, in the summer of 2015, they sang at the Taste of Edmonton festival. On Dec. 11, Adilman and Goldman will speak at an Edmonton Public Library event at the Chateau Lacombe Hotel. Though technically it’s a talk, not singalong event, audience members who attend should expect to sing.

“With that many people, it’ll be really fun to get them singing, rather than tell them how we work,” Adilman said.

Nearly a decade ago, Adilman was asked to organize a small choir for a friend’s birthday party. Goldman, an acquaintance, played guitar for the group of 13 singers. Adilman could see instantly that he was inspired by the experience, and the pair talked about replicating it for the next few years. Finally, in December of 2010, Adilman asked if any of his Facebook friends would be interested in joining a drop-in choir. People were interested.

Videos of performances only capture part of what transpires at a Choir! Choir! Choir! gathering. The hosts treat each event like an enormous house party. They try to make people feel at home by joking with the crowd, asking questions and sharing stories. “Before you get people to sing, they have to feel comfortable,” Adilman said. Once people start singing, there’s often a wide display of emotion — laughter and tears are common.

When David Bowie died in 2016, more than 500 singers gathered at the Art Gallery of Ontario to sing an original arrangement of “Space Oddity.” More recently, singers gathered outside Toronto’s city hall to pay tribute to The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie, who died of cancer. Downie’s brother, Mike, made a speech at the event and Adilman recalled feeling unusually nervous about striking the right tone with the memorial. In an age of mourning celebrities’ deaths on social media, the singing group has given people opportunities to connect with other fans and grieve in the real world.

In the group’s early days, the founders avoided overt political statements, but that made less and less sense to the pair as they realized what they built had become a kind of a movement that stands for inclusivity and equality. They raised $70,000 for two Syrian refugee families in 2015 and have sung protest songs against Rob Ford, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. When the Rufus Wainwright video went viral, Adilman noticed American media were framing it “against the background of a broken America.”

“You have to stand for something,” he said. “Standing up for LGBTQ people is part of our identity, and if you do speak out against that, then you’re not with us.” That said, he hopes people who don’t share their values come to events and interact with people who do.

EPL presents “Building Harmony with Choir! Choir! Choir!” at 7:00 p.m. on Dec. 11 at the Chateau Lacombe (10111 Bellamy Hill Rd.) Tickets for EPL cardholders are $10 on Eventbrite. All proceeds from the event are going to the Stanley A. Milner Library revitalization project.